Using the New Year's Resolutions frenzy to get free press for your product.

Each year the press obsesses about New Year's Resolutions around this time, and if you're quick you can still benefit from it and get free press for your product.

These are the three most common New Year's Resolutions:

Health (Exercising, running, losing weight)
Saving money
Starting a new hobby or project

If your product could fit any of these or is in any way related to goal-setting, keep reading.

Step 1:

Build a pitch that shows that your product fits one or more of the categories above. Think about possible headlines.

For example:
Do or Pay donates to charity if you achieve your goals but charges you if you fail.

Step 2:

Hand-pick a list of journalists. I use Just Reach Out to find and contact journalists. But if the price puts you off, do some Google-jutsu and search for articles about New Year's Resolutions related to your field, then find the email of the journalist with Hunter or a similar tool.

(Random email lists online can have plenty of outdated emails that will bounce and eventually add your email to spam lists. You don't want that.)

Step 3:

Send a friendly, short (max. 200 words), and personalized email to each journalist. Personalizing it takes time, but think quality over quantity. Mention the article they wrote that you found, and use their name to address them. Think about building a bit of trust with the journalist. Make their life easier by using a good headline they could use as the email subject.

Step 4:

Follow-up with those who don't answer after 2-3 days. Show that you care about them replying. If they don't reply, try again and then move on and search for other journalists.

It takes some time to get results, so the sooner you start the better. Let me know how it goes, here or on Twitter.

Good luck.

I've used this for Do or Pay, a goal-setting website for ambitious content creators and indie hackers. I'm just starting to reap the results of this, but there's definitely potential for plenty of press for some products. I'll keep you all updated.